I Need the Grocery Store — And Not for Food

In the checkout line, my humanity returns

Getting prepped and dressed for “church” — aka the grocery store. Photo by author.

Twenty nervous shoppers, most of us strangers, wheel our carts past the sweet onions, green bananas, early season peaches. I go the wrong way down the soup aisle.

It’s May, still early days in the pandemic. When a woman points out my error I apologize, defensively.

“Oh it’s OK,” the woman says with unexpected warmth. Her eyes are ice blue; they sparkle. She wears a black mask, so I rely on the language of her eyes to fill in the story.

“I messed it up too,” she assures me. “We’ll get it down eventually.”

That’s all it takes: a moment of tenderness, the sound of the word “we” and I feel myself breathe. The brittleness of my posture loosens. The reminder of being a human-among-humans thaws my deep emotional freeze for a little while.

I drive home with my shoulders lower; there’s a smile for my husband, a kiss and a grab of his butt. Kindness returns.

Friends order groceries online; I refuse. “I need to witness humans doing daily life,” I tell a friend. “If not, I’ll get craggy and mean and rotten inside.”

I want to cry in the checkout line